Healthy Pumpkin Pie Recipe: Try This Perfect Holiday Dessert
'Tis the season for pumpkin pie! Instead of buying a pre-made boxed product, try your hand at our tasty and healthy pumpkin pie recipe.
Although the pumpkin is a very nutritious gourd that provides lots of protein, calcium, and zinc, pumpkin pie is another story. Between its buttered crust and the added cream and sugar, the beloved pumpkin pie can be an unhealthy fall dessert. Luckily, we have a healthy pumpkin pie recipe that has all of the taste but less of the added fat and sugar.
So after all of the delicious turkey, cranberry sauce, and sweet potato casserole on your holiday dinner menu, we hope you leave room for this yummy treat.
Healthy Pumpkin Pie Recipe
Pie Crust Ingredients & Instructions
- 1 cup of walnuts, ground in food processor
- 1 cup pecans, ground in food processor
- 4 tablespoons real organic butter, melted
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon
Combine ingredients and press firmly into pie pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 to 15 minutes, or until lightly browned. Add filling.
Filling Ingredients:
- 2 cans organic pumpkin*
PICK THE RIGHT PUMPKINS
One of the joys of DIY pies is going out at harvest time and choosing just the right pumpkin. Click here to read a post called Finding the Best Pumpkins for Pies.
*Note: Fresh ingredients are healthier than canned foods due to BPA exposure. To use real pumpkin rather than canned pumpkin, cut one large pumpkin in half. Scrape the inside of the pumpkin to remove the stringy fibers. Place the two halves cut side down in a roasting pan along with 2 cups of water. Bake the pumpkin for 90 minutes. Scoop the inside of the pumpkin out and puree with a blender or food processor.
- 3 large organic, pastured eggs
- 1/2 cup vanilla almond milk
- 1/3 cup stevia or xylitol (birch tree)
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon ginger
- 1/2 teaspoon cloves
- 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
Filling Instructions:
- Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
- Beat eggs lightly with a whisk.
- Add all other ingredients and beat until smooth.
- Pour filling into pie shell.
- Bake 15 minutes and then reduce temperature to 350 degrees and bake for another 45 to 60 minutes.
- Test with toothpick starting at approximately 45 minutes after lowering the oven temperature, and every 5 minutes thereafter.
- The toothpick should come out clean or nearly clean when the pie is done.
SOURCES & RESOURCES
For related reading, please visit these posts.
PUMPKIN HEALTH BENEFITS
While you’re prepping your healthy pumpkin pie recipe, you can anticipate the health benefits provided by the pumpkin. Flesh from pumpkins is rich in carotenoids, which feature a host of anticancer activities. Eating foods with carotenoids can decrease your risk of various types of cancer, including lung cancer, prostate cancer, breast cancer, and colon cancer. Carotenoids, according to Oregon State University, “are a class of more than 750 naturally occurring pigments synthesized by plants, algae, and photosynthetic bacteria. These richly colored molecules are the sources of the yellow, orange, and red colors of many plants. Fruit and vegetables provide most of the 40 to 50 carotenoids found in the human diet.” (The pumpkin, by the way, is a fruit, not a vegetable.)
Various parts of the pumpkin also have been shown to lower blood pressure, control blood sugar, and improve urinary help. For more information, see our post Pumpkin Health Benefits.
Originally published in 2017, this post is regularly updated.
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While preparing this heathy pumpkin pie recipe, remember to save—and bake—those pumpkin seeds. They're known to improve such bone conditions as osteoarthritis and osteoporosis.
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